Greasy Pole: Crack down on the fraudsters! (2001)

The Greasy Pole Column from the February 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

The queen's speech is when she dresses up in large, heavy and expensive clothes and rides in her carriage to the Houses of Parliament—but only to the House of Lords because, as a result of something which happened a few hundred years ago, she is not allowed into the Commons, who have to be brought to the Lords to listen to the queen by Black Rod, who is called that because he carries one. The MPs go to the Lords with each minister walking beside their opposition shadow, often sharing a private joke but presumably not about the queen because they have all sworn loyalty to her.

When they get to the Lords they hear the queen telling them about the work which is planned for them in the next session, which is a bit boring for the ministers because they know it already. The speech is punctuated with the phrase "My government will . . ." as if the queen is telling the government what to do when really it is the other way around. Some people sneer at all this as a mess of outdated flummery. Others regard it as essential to our way of life and think that without it civilisation as we know it would crumble into the dust.

In December, for example, the queen told us that her government is going to crack down on Benefit fraudsters—people who claim state benefit when they are not legally entitled to. The government certainly thinks this is important because they say it costs between £2 billion and £4 billion a year and some ministers have been known to hint that bloated claimants roll up in posh cars to sign on at the dole office, or skim up a ladder to clean windows when they are claiming disability benefit for a bad back.

Campaign

Some months before the queen had told us about the crack-down it had been publicised in the DSS Xpress, a magazine which announces itself as "For all staff throughout the DSS" so does not have any Page Three girls or racing tips or agony aunts. But what it does have is no more relevant. The front page of Issue No. 2 (June 2000) is dominated by a piece "Tackling the fraudsters". Based on an interview with Charlotte Abrahams, one of a team running a campaign to expose and prosecute people who make illegal claims for state benefit, the article crackles with teeth-grating quotes like "What fraudsters are doing is unfair" and "We need DSS staff to 'buy in' to the idea and give us their support”—which make Page Three and tipsters and agony aunts seem rather less objectionable. Charlotte tells us that benefit fraudsters ". . . are taking public money—our money—that is meant for the vulnerable". She highlighted a recent TV campaign which depicted the Social Security "cheats" as greedy cynics who are willing to stoop to scrounging drinks off their mates. Anyone who felt their gorge rise when they watched these ads could have gone out to get away from them, except that if they did that they might have come across the same message, plastered across the backs of buses.

But the DSS Xpress is not content stop at hunting down illegal benefit claimants. On the back page there is a piece about another anti-fraud campaign—this one against Social Security staff. The hunter-in-chief is one Tony Edge, who has worked for the DSS for over 30 years and is now a man with "a special interest in fraud and compliance issues". He is not one to mince his words: "This is an important matter with potentially serious consequences in terms of the loss of public funds and the public's confidence in us". (After 30 years, it seems to have escaped him that there are very few organisations "the public" have as little confidence in as the DSS). The burden of Tony's campaign is to encourage staff members to spy on each other and to report anyone they suspect of defrauding their employer in any way. This can't be healthy for what is called staff relations but in case anyone fails to understand what is expected of them there are three touching stories about how this has worked in individual cases, one of fiddling expense claims, another of claiming benefit while working, and another of using unauthorised software in the DSS computers. So far, no stories of anyone smuggling the odd paper clip home but presumably Tony is working on it.

Manifestos

We might have expected that the Labour government, ever alert to any opportunity to exploit popular neuroses, would come up with a policy to bash the Social Security fraudsters. The policy announced in the queen's speech had already been flagged up at Labour's conference in September, when we were told about plans to take new powers to trawl through bank accounts and insurance policies, to check telephones and electricity and water meters of people suspected of making false claims. Tony Edge must have been quite excited at the prospect. The government can claim to have a mandate of sorts for this, for their election manifesto used militant words like "crack down . . . clampdown . . . maintain action against benefit fraud of all kinds". Which was not new or different because the Tories were making the same threats: "Social Security fraud," they screamed in their manifesto, "must be stamped out". They had already started on this: it was Peter Lilley who began hunting down the fraudsters when he was in charge of Social Security; in 1994 he set up a Benefit Review, partly to measure the scale of false claims. It should not surprise anyone that New Labour are enthusiastically carrying on where the man they once hated, as the most implacable representative of Thatcherite policies, left off.

In places where the real world of poverty and survival operates, the estimate that fraudulent claims run into billions of pounds every year does not go unchallenged. The Royal National Institute for the Blind has examined how the Benefit Review decided that the claims for Disability Living Allowance were potentially losing £499 million a year through projected fraud. They concluded that the Review arrived at this figure by adding the amounts involved in "suspected fraud" (which were not in any way proven) to those in "confirmed fraud". When we take into account the fact that of 1,200 interviews carried out by the Review the number of cases of "confirmed fraud" was only 18 we see the matter in a rather different light. In fact, if each of those 18 people had been receiving benefit at the highest level the loss would have amounted to £77,000. Set against this, the Review projected underpayment of benefit, due to under-reporting or to mistakes by Benefits Agency staff, of a little over £230 million. To put a human face on their findings, the RNIB listed cases in which blind, sometimes elderly, people had had their claims, which were quite within the rules, refused and who won their case only after a long and stressful appeal. Of course it would once have been quite proper for these people to be scourged by Peter Lilley—and now by his successors in the Labour government—as scroungers and fraudsters.

Poverty

The assault on so-called fraudsters is popular with politicians because it has a number of elements crying out to be exploited by anyone with ambitions to climb the greasy pole. The victims of the assault are often among the more deprived and vulnerable people. It is easy to depict them as calculating, cynical scroungers when they are often simply desperate about how to survive, and not doing this as efficiently as they might. In many cases when they have made false claims they have overlooked the fact that they could have applied legitimately for some other benefit, except that nobody at the DSS went out of their way to tell them and the forms were too long and complicated. They are typical of the human casualties of this social system in which workers are judged by the degree of their availability for profitable exploitation. In terms of their access to the wealth which their class produces they are in the lower reaches, where poverty means sickness and premature death. In June 2000 researchers at Glasgow University found that women from poorer backgrounds are three times more likely to contract cervical cancer. In September the Joseph Rowntree Trust stated that two million children in Britain are in conditions where they lack at least two "basic" amenities, things like a damp-free home, an annual holiday or usable furniture. Yet these people are among the class who produce all the wealth of capitalism. The fact that they allow themselves to be deprived of proper access to what results from their labour is a fraud on a scale which historically dwarfs the most lurid of what happens down at the Social.

Then we must ask what are we to think about the assurances from political leaders, that the problems of society can be ameliorated, or even eliminated, by a few simple measures. Blair's Labour Party is particularly eager to try this deception. That is why they make so many speeches denouncing some uncomfortable aspect of working class life, as a prelude to churning out yet another new law to reassure us that nothing more is needed to settle the problem. In this way we get a law against the so-called yob culture, which is defined, not as the boorishness of MPs in what they call their debates but as disruptive behaviour in city centres by alienated youngsters. Or a law which slaps a curfew on teenagers, on the grounds that if a young person is on the streets after a time approved by Jack Straw they are bound to be planning to burgle an old person's home. And a law clamping down on Social Security fraud. Get rid of problems like these, we are informed, and we shall benefit enormously from the existence of a working class which does not rebel against the repression of its social position. All of that argument is fraudulent.

And finally, Blair's Labour Party won millions of votes by persuading people that they are a proper alternative to the Tories and that under their government capitalism in Britain would be run in a different, more humane and progressive way. There is a mounting pile of evidence to expose how untrue this is, including the government's assault on people who practice a kind fraud which is unacceptable to capitalism. Which makes the Labour Party among the worst of fraudsters, whose exposure should be a priority.

Ivan

Postcapitalism? (2015)

Book Review from the September 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Postcapitalism. A Guide to Our Future', by Paul Mason. Allen Lane.

In his new book Channel 4 journalist and one-time Trotskyist Paul Mason begins by explaining the periodic growth and contraction of the capitalist economy by Kondratieff wave theory.

Kondratieff waves are named after the Soviet-era Russian economist (shot under Stalin) who imagined a 50-year periodicity in capitalist economic activity, and who then concluded that each economic cycle reflected the advent, adoption, flourishing and demise of its age’s defining technology.

Kondratieff’s waves operate on a timescale midway between the epochal transformations of social systems, based on a change of class ownership and control of the social means of production, and the Marxian economics of nature-imposed social reproduction under the capitalist social system, based upon its characteristic mode of class ownership and control of the social means of production.

Scientifically, one would seek to explain Kondratieff’s apparent wave phenomena in Marxian terms, i.e. in terms of the social system’s essence – capital-- but such attempts have so far failed to convince and this intriguing problem for Marxian theory remains unresolved.

However, for the purposes of Paul Mason’s argument, capitalist society has now started to ride the information technology Kondratieff wave. For him, information technology is the surfboard that took us out to the wave and, once we master it, it will be the surfboard that rescues us from the capitalist depths and carries us to the post-capitalist shore. Our ride will take one Kondratieff period of 50 years.

So what characterises the Kondratieff IT wave which Mason says we are now on?

The IT wave has already established its essential characteristics through the emergence of free Open Source software, free creative commons internet resources, free Wikipedia collaboration, etc. The IT wave’s free goods are premised on the assumption that IT development and IT maintenance require a vanishing amount of human labour, and that consequently IT software products and IT firmware-based technology possess a vanishing marginal cost (i.e. can be replicated for everybody for free). And IT technology will invade everything we produce.

His argument is that this characteristic invariant of the IT wave -- free technology and its technology-based products -- is totally subversive of capitalism, since the indispensable compulsion for a capitalist ruling class to withhold ownership and control of the means of production from the working class, thereby forcing the working class to work on its terms, will no longer serve its capitalist purpose once everything is free. The means of production might just as well be owned by everyone or by no-one.

That, in a nutshell, is his argument. IT will issue us into an Age of Abundance -- the necessary precondition for postcapitalism to succeed. Postcapitalism will be characterised by renewable energy, neutral carbon, zero socially necessary labour time, and zero marginal cost.

So far, so good, up to a point. Some interesting socialist (in our sense) arguments, entertainingly and intelligently told, including a good description of the labour theory of value, a good discussion of the economic calculation pseudo-problem, etc.

But Mason’s argument is tainted by his apology for gradualism and his reformist transitional plan.

If this seems an unnecessarily harsh judgment, judge for yourself from the legislation, and the prevailing capitalist social relations under which it is to be promulgated, that he wants ‘a government that embraced postcapitalism’ to pass while on its IT Kondratieff wave.

Here is his list of some of his transitional reforms outlined in his final chapter as ‘Project Zero’: Suppress market forces for energy. Suppress or ‘socialise’ all monopolies. Pay everyone a basic income. Regulate the rate of profit. Enforce profits to be ploughed back into ‘social justice.’ Make WiFi free to break up the telecom monopolies. Cheapen the cost of basic necessities. Produce more stuff for free. Sell water, energy, housing, transport, healthcare, telecommunications and education at cost price. Shrink (national and personal) debt. Reduce the time for holding patent and intellectual property rights, e.g. 25 years. Increase the use of creative commons copyright. Incentivise investment in renewables. Support local power grids. Elect bank bosses democratically, and scrutinise their financial behaviour. Track down and suppress all off-shore trading. Make it unethical for a chartered accountant to propose a tax avoidance scheme. Issue fiat money to kill neoliberalism. Increase the velocity of circulation of money to ‘tame’ speculation. Set a high inflation rate to stimulate sustainable growth, etc. etc.

His laudable aim is to promote the transition to a non-market economy of abundance where goods and services are free, but his long transition period turns out to be a fantasy hybrid world, an illusory economy in which markets, profits and banks exist alongside a growing non-market, non-profit, non-money-based sector.

The Marxian answer to his gradualist project and its reform agenda is that, while capitalist social relationships exist, his reforms have no chance of succeeding. And once a socialist majority consciously abolishes capitalist social relations of ownership and control of the social means production, his reform agenda becomes redundant, unnecessary and meaningless.

TWC.

The Enemy on the Left! - New Statesman (1973)

From the March 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

A regular column dealing with the antics of those who call themselves socialist but in practice do nothing but harm to the cause.

Last month this column dealt with Tribune but that other fraudulent socialist paper, the New Statesman is of course just as guilty of these attempts (often all too successful) to con the working class out of their votes. I well remember in the '64 election, reading out at an SPGB meeting a leading article from that paper which actually went through the various issues and could not avoid showing that there was not a pin to choose even between the promises of Tory and Labour. But you should turn out the Tories because Wilson is such a good chap! You may find it difficult to credit that an "intellectual" paper could be so pathetic. And ironically, the same paper now tells its readers that Wilson pollutes the political atmosphere! It takes an "intellectual" rather a long time to spot a blinding glimpse of the obvious. But I wanted to deal with its attitude to democracy (which is an essential facet of Socialism). They recently ran an article on Kaunda's one-party state in Zambia. Now it is clear to the meanest intelligence that a one-party state us just a euphemism for a dictatorial tyranny. For it means that anyone who wishes to oppose the government (or is even suspected of such ideas) finds himself not in Parliament, not even on the hustings, but in a gaol, or a concentration camp, or cemetery. This is true whether the one-party is white Nazis or black Kaunda-ists.

Just to underline this the Guardian reported some time ago that the "socialist" Kaunda had taken to ending his meetings with a ringing slogan: "One State! One Zambia!" Consciously or otherwise taking a leaf out of Hitler's book, he might as well amend that to "Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Ein Kaunda!" But the point here is that you might think that the NS article was a denunciation of dictatorship. What a hope! The writer was their "Africa expert", the same John Hatch who used to defend in the same NS the régime of that even worse black Hitler, Nkrumah. The article was an apologia from beginning to end. And to hell with those who rot in tyrants' gaols. These inverted racialists scream for "One Man, one vote" in South Africa or Rhodesia. Quite right, too. Why shouldn't blacks have votes> But when Kaunda or Nyerere, these pseudo-socialist darlings of the lefties, effectively decree "All blacks, no votes!" (for what is a vote without a choice?), the lefties organise no demos, break no embassy windows (not that emotional outbursts of that nature are any use, of course). They really are inverted racialists who say that black subjects of leaders like Kaunda whom lefties have spent their lives arse-licking are not fit for votes.

L. E. Weidberg

The Enemy on the Left! - Tribune (1973)

The Enemy on the Left Column from the February 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

A regular column dealing with the antics of those who call themselves socialist but in practice do nothing but harm to the cause.

The antics (no other word will do) of the pseudo-socialists of the world — needless to say they are by no means confined to this country — fill just about half the acreage of every day's papers, so it is difficult to pick one or two items out of the available abundance for discussion in this column. If one sees something particularly gruesome from, say, Foot or Wilson or Nyerere (they are all socialists now, of course, even the grotesque Amin) one knows that tomorrow's press will produce something even more heinous. However, it should be instructive if this month we look at an item from one of the best-known left-wing papers in this country.

Tribune has of course been associated since its foundation with all the best Labour lefties from Nye Bevan (late, but I fear, unlamented) through his successor at Ebbw Vale, Foot, along with Atkinson, Allaun, Heffer and the rest of the menagerie. A few weeks ago they ran a piece getting all hot under the collar about a remark made by Reg Prentice who is on Wilson's front bench and is in fact his Minister for Unemployment designate. It seems that this pseudo had the impudence to say that a figure of 400,000 unemployed was "acceptable" and the Tribune pseudos were quite ready to tear him to pieces over it. First let us just have a think about the statement itself (which was not repudiated by Wilson or any other front-bencher to my knowledge). If one includes dependents, it means that about a million members of the British working class must find it acceptable to be members of the non-working class (I know they would find it acceptable if they were made members of the real non-working class, the capitalists, but I don't think that's what Prentice meant.) It appears, therefore, that the Labour leadership find the fate of a million people living on doles and social security in our so-called affluent society to be acceptable. How jolly of them. Whether it is acceptable to the million poor devils themselves, or whether anyone but a lunatic should support a party which finds this sort of thing acceptable, well, you don't really expect Labour politicians to lose sleep over that as long as they're all right Jack.

But the Tribune types are different? You could have fooled me. The Foots and the rest were all there at Westminster keeping their Labour government in power a few years ago when the unemployed figure was not 400,000 but 600,000. Acceptable or otherwise, Tribune MPs had to accept it, didn't they? And of course there was only one reason why the figure did not rise to a million (i.e. at least two million people suffering from the pernicious disease of capitalism) while Labour was in power. And that was that in 1970 the electorate threw them out, so that the honour of achieving the million was won by the Tories. It has long been clear to all but the wilfully blind that capitalism will produce its ups and downs in unemployment along with the other evils which afflict society, irrespective of whether the capitalist managers call themselves Tories or Labour (or, god help us, socialist). And it is just another of the crimes of the lefties that they hypocritically deride the Tory government for doing exactly the same sort of things which their own party did before them.

L. E. Weidberg

Editorial: Should Aliens Be Allowed In? (1938)

Editorial from the September 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

The persecution of minorities in many countries has made more acute the problem of the refugee, seeking a land where he will be permitted to live in comparative peace. But with hardly a single exception there are no countries which will freely admit the penniless wanderer, no matter how good his credentials or how great his need. A London magistrate, in passing a heavy sentence on some refugees who were smuggled in without the consent of the Government, angrily denounced them and upheld the policy of punishing before expelling those who try to break in. He was only echoing what many people and many newspapers say. One of the common arguments against giving refuge is that some refugees are "undesirables," but those who say this do not go on to advocate admitting the "desirable" refugees freely nor indeed do they examine what does and what does not constitute an "undesirable." If it meant professional burglars it would at least be clear, but more often than not it means anyone who may be described as an "agitator"—that is one who wants to make the world a better place by exposing existing evils. A sensibly run community, anxious to improve itself, would welcome assistance from any quarter, but capitalism is not a sensibly run system of society, and the capitalists want to maintain capitalism more than they want anything else. So in their eyes a Socialist is an "undesirable," whether born in Germany of Jewish parents or born in London of the native blend of invading races of long ago. Not so a member of a foreign ruling class. If a Baron Franckenstein wants refuge in England then the formalities which the penniless refugee must observe can be waived, and he can have a knighthood bestowed on him, all without a murmur of protest from the magistracy or the capitalist Press. Not that the Austrian Baron is a criminal, but, after all, he does belong to a thoroughly undesirable class, the class which lives on property incomes—that is, by the sweat of the brows of the working-class. To the clear-sighted worker the capitalist class are all undesirables, no matter where they originate.

The problem is, of course, obscured by arguments about unemployment. We are asked if we want foreign workers to take jobs away from British workers, and on the surface it looks like a reasonable point of view. Actually it is baseless. It is true that if an Italian waiter comes to London he may get a job in preference to a British waiter, just as hundreds of thousands of British workers have in the past managed to get jobs in America and many other foreign countries. But unemployment in the mass is not caused by the size of the population and does not increase because the population is increased, whether by births or by immigration. Capitalism everywhere normally has its unemployed, no matter what the population figures may be. If unemployment disappeared, then the workers would be able to demand more wages, and this would reduce profits to the vanishing point. Unemployment is, therefore, a capitalist necessity. The capitalist himself deliberately creates it by installing labour-displacing machinery in the effort to keep costs down and profits up.

The truth is that capitalism to-day is an anti-social arrangement and produces anti-social ideas, even contradictory ones. Human beings intelligently carrying on the production of wealth for all to consume would welcome additional willing hands, quite apart from the natural desire to give refuge to the persecuted. Instead, the competitive struggle arising out of capitalism makes the worker shun his foreign fellow-workers in distress, and makes him welcome the wealthy idlers born at home or abroad who consume the wealth produced by the working-class without giving any help in the process of production.

As for contradictory ideas born of capitalist economic contradictions we see the very newspapers and public men who are now crying out about the falling birth rate and consequent decline of population opposing the entry of able-bodied, industrious refugee whose numbers would help to arrest the decline.

A few years ago these same people—before the scientists got busy on population trends—were preaching smaller families as a way to get rid of unemployment. Now they first forget the unemployment and demand larger families, then remember the unemployment again as a reason for keeping out the poor refugees (but not the Baron Franckensteins). 

A Ghost of the Past (1938)

From the September 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

As a propagandist, the present writer has recently met with some violent abuse from Communists when referring to the changing policies of the Communist Party. The abuse has often reached the point of accusing the S.P.G.B. and its speakers of deliberate lying and even of fabricating evidence of the Communist Party's past hostility to the Labour Party. A case in point which provokes Communists to accuse us of lying is reference to a statement made in 1930 by Mr. H. Pollitt, which encouraged Communists to break up Labour meetings. Mr. Pollitt's statement is so often denied at our meetings that there can be no harm in reproducing it. It appeared in The Daily Worker on January 29th, 1930, and reads: —

"A Labour meeting should not be allowed to be held anywhere. This will bring us into conflict with the Authorities, but must be done. The Daily Worker will lead the revolutionary workers boldly and openly against this Government of scoundrels and agents of capitalism."

Perhaps, quite naturally, in view of the Communist Party's present genteel drawing-room methods of wooing the Labour Party, any evidence of its apostasy is likely to arouse hatred.

Sammy Cash

Material World: No Peace in the Pacific (2015)

The Material World Column from the September 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

After Costa Rica’s civil war in 1948, Jose Figueres, the then president of Costa Rica, abolished the army, took a sledgehammer and began the demolition of the nation's military headquarters. That fundamental decision was enshrined in the 1949 Constitution. To this day, Costa Rica has no army, navy or air force, no heavy weapons of any kind but instead they have the Fuerza Pública (Public Force) responsible for law enforcement and border patrol.  

On September 2, 1945, a formal surrender ceremony was performed in Tokyo Bay, Japan, aboard the battleship USS Missouri. After its defeat in World War Two, Japan, as an act of remorse at its previous expansionist aggression, declared in the country’s post-war constitution’s Article 9, that the Japanese people ‘forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes’ and thus restricted the Japanese military, known as the Self-Defence Forces, to engage only in self-defence. It meant that a large and technologically advanced state could not engage in any collective alliances or coalitions aiding friendly countries under attack, principally the United States or its proxy forces such as the Philippines. In the mounting tensions of the Chinese territorial claims to much of the South China Sea and its numerous islands, the full military potential of Japan requires to be deployed to protect or acquire whatever rich resources the region possesses.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants Japan's armed forces to join in military activities abroad and actively assist allies. Abe’s right-wing nationalism has created suspicion among many that it would lead a country that has long embraced pacifism into war again. The Abe government has yet to offer a full and unconditional apology for past aggression and atrocities committed by previous Japanese militarism during its period of colonisation. Abe seeks to ‘normalise’ the Japanese armed forces’ role in foreign policy and he defends the bills creating a more muscular military by saying they ‘are not for engaging in wars’ but are a deterrent to ‘prevent war.’ He has argued that the bills will allow Japan to better defend its allies under the United Nation’s collective self-defence doctrine, which allows for ‘individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs.’  He describes this by the oxymoronic term, ‘proactive pacifism’ and hopes it will draw the Japanese people away from their anti-war sentiments.

Normally, amending the Constitution would require two-thirds approval in both houses of Parliament, followed by a national referendum. Abe has circumvented that process by having his government declare a reinterpretation of the Constitution and then following up a package of eleven security-related bills which, unlike a formal constitutional change, requires only a majority vote and there is no referendum. A recent survey by Asahi Shimbun newspaper showed only 26 percent support the legislation that will enable Japan's Self-Defense Forces to engage in wars overseas. 56 percent of those polled expressed opposition.

Many countries try to bamboozle us with Orwellian language. America’s ‘Department of War’, a more truthful name, thought it wiser to re-name itself ‘Department of Defense’. Israel describes its military as a ‘Defence Force’, and by doing so, hopes it explains away the occupation of and the offensive actions against Palestinians. Wars are now called ‘peace-keeping’ missions or ‘humanitarian’ interventions.

The Socialist Party has always held that the menace of war cannot be done away with and will always loom over us while its cause, the capitalist system, remains. Modern war is really an extension of business when the economic rivalries between the vying national sections of the capitalist class can no longer be peacefully resolved or controlled. The Japanese people are to be applauded for the stand they have taken against wars of aggression. However, the realities of diplomacy and nationalism mean that the capitalist class will protect their interests in whatever way they can … and perhaps the reason their armies are called ‘defence’ forces is that they exist to defend the ruling class. It would be encouraging if all nations could follow in the steps of Costa Rica but sadly it won’t happen.  While we have capitalism we cannot have stability. Always new crises will occur and new sources of conflict will appear over markets, the sources of raw material and geo-political strategic points. Seeing the world as it really is, we know that we shall have wars because the capitalist basis for them remains.

ALJO

Remember! (1915)

From the December 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

Surely we will remember. When the time
Of reparation comes, as come it must,
We will remember many an age and clime,
Many a life down-trodden in the dust;
The Negroes bent and broken by the whip,
The Chinese children bought and sold in shame,
The white girl held in prostitution's grip,
The white man free in nothing but in name.
We will remember those who died in vain
To quench a nation's blood-thirst; all the scorn,
Indignities and insults that we bore.
And you, our masters, you, our curse and bane,
Shall bear a tithe of what we slaves have borne
Ere gladly you forget for evermore.

F. J. Webb 

Editorial: The attitude of the London Dockers (1949)

Editorial from the August 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

The action of London dockers in coming out on strike over two ships that were concerned in a dispute originating on the other side of the Atlantic is a gesture that must be applauded by all those interested in the solidarity of labour. Whatever the merits of the dispute these London men were prepared to make sacrifices in a cause that had no direct influence on their own wages and conditions of labour. It is this aspect of the dispute that is heartening to socialists as it is one of the harbingers of that wider and more pregnant solidarity that will herald the triumph of Socialism. This particular strike has occurred at a time when prominent trade unionists and all the Labour Governments, including the Russian, are stressing the importance of nationalism.

It is true that trade union internationalism is a long way from the internationalism in which socialists are interested but it still expresses, even if at times unconsciously, a recognition of the identity of the workers' interests all over the world as opposed to the interests of the international capitalist class.

The attitude of the dockers is in striking contrast to the views of the Government. Whereas the dockers were, in their action, giving expression to an international outlook the Government's is almost entirely national as witness the following statement by the Attorney-General, Sir Hartley Shawcross:

"These unofficial strikes are an act of economic treason to our trade unions, to the Socialist movement and indeed to our country." (News Chronicle, 14/7/49.)

As "our country" does not belong to us but to those who own the means of production and distribution, the Labour Government definition of "economic treason" is one that should not worry the dockers or any other workers. The fact that it has not done so in the present dispute is one that must give satisfaction to the socialist.

Inequalities in Russia (1962)

From the August 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

A member who has recently visited Russia sends us his interesting observations. Ed. Com.

The July Socialist Standard quoted John Mossman of the Daily Mail as saying that whereas Russian women street cleaners get about 12 a month, space and atomic scientists bring home more than 20,000 a year. These are only "dry statistics," our local Communists will try and explain them away . . . All animals are equal, only some are more equal than others!

But to an observer—particularly a Socialist one—even with just one open, it shows that class divisions are rapidly developing in the Soviet Union.

A few weeks ago I returned from Russia; and it was the wide difference of dress between the poorest and the more affluent that struck me. For example, in Leningrad one sees many elderly women street cleaners, poorly dressed and shuffling along the gutters with their brooms. It is not a particularly happy sight; and is in complete contrast to the well-dressed officials, diplomats and "important" people that one meets in the Astoria hotel or on board the M.S. Michael Kalinin, a Soviet luxury liner. Most of these "important" people travel first class, dress well, carry expensive ciné cameras and do not have to worry if there is a shortage of butter or meat (which there is at the moment in the Soviet Union), or if prices rise.

It is obvious to the observer in Russia that there is a growing gulf between the average worker and the emergent bourgeoisie; the one looks shabby and drab, and travels by bus, trolleybus or tram; the other has a Moscovich car, or uses Aeroflot or a luxury liner. The privileged few have a large modern apartment or a Dacha (or both), whilst the majority in a city like Leningrad live in slums every bit as bad or worse than those of Liverpool or Glasgow.

Some people are lucky enough to get a flat in the suburbs. According to a recent issue of Moscow News, "families that are still housed in overcrowded and substandard dwellings will get new flats before the end of the first decade." And the experts say that approximately 86 million flats will have to be built within the next twenty years! We seem to have heard all this before—in Britain.

Soviet apologists tell us that life is getting better. And it is. A little better for the majority; and a lot better for the few.

A British visitor to the Soviet Union said to me: "If this is Socialism, I don't want it." But, of course, it is not Socialism.

Peter E. Newell  

The Heart of England. (1923)

From the June 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who was the great traducer who once said, "The Daily Mirror for those who can't read, and the Daily Mail for those who can't think"? Surely that was in the nebulous period now referred to as "before the war."  Should he have evaded the Roll of Honour, and have attained either the "dole" or the O.B.E., it is devoutedly to be hoped he will emerge from his deserved obscurity and revise at least the second half of his glib, but glaucous epigram. For does not the Daily Mail devote two columns each dat to "What Our Readers Think"? It does. For the expenditure of one poor humble penny, any day, one can be stirred to one's inmost wave-lengths by the spectacle of our nation doing its thinking. Heart-throbs by the hundredweight, and thinking by the rod, pole or perch. Any issue will do.

Take this one of January 13th. Mr. Sumner-Jones, hailing from proletarian Piccadilly, leads off with:

"France, through your invaluable pages, can see into our hearts, and recognise the fact that the blind policy of our Government is not approved by the British people."

There now. You'd never have thought that, would you? But this is more thoughtful:

"May I thank you for your splendid stand for France, almost alone as you are and in opposition to the section of the Press, which has learnt nothing and forgotten everything."

That is from Mr. Brenton Gray, a gentleman with two names, but only one brain. You might possibly suggest that the "section" he speaks of having learnt nothing, could not possibly forget everything; but there you see, we cannot all be thinkers. Then there's Samuel Willie, from Yeovil. He says: "Your leading article, 'God Speed to France,' "should re-act on the heart and conscience of every unselfish patriot throughout the Empire."

Is it necessary to add that Sam Willie is an unselfish patriot?

Then "Regular Subscriber" insists that "all that is best in the British Empire will be with you."

Can one doubt that "Regular Subscriber is included in "all that is best"?

"If Bonar Law could only read the minds of the people he would get a surprise," says another original possessor of grey matter. Let H. S. take heart. The feat is not an easy one, and "surprise" is quite an inadequate term of it were accomplished.

Mr. Davis, of Brighton, is a true Briton. "I thoroughly agree with the French action as, I hope, does every other true Briton."

As W. S. Gilbert phased it:

"For he himself has said it,
And its greatly to his credit"

Mr. Sadler is flattering. "It is, indeed, like you to side with common-sense and justice."

The Editor's blushes are not recorded. Perhaps he was looking for an antemetic. Modesty you will see is equally the possession of the Editor and his readers. As F. H. puts it: "Every intelligent patriotic man is behind you."

We are, indeed, a great nation; though it is sadly to be feared that modesty will prove our undoing. Capt. James Murphy reminds us of the saying of the German officer to the British Officer: "You will always be fools, and we shall never be gentlemen." Notice the implication. Modesty forbids our dwelling on it. As that poet of pacifism and true British modesty, Rudyard Kipling has enshrined it:

"Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
   An humble and a contrite heart;
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
   Lest we forget—lest we forget."

W. T. Hopley

More Union Bashing (2015)

From the September 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

In July the government published details of its Trade Union Bill which is expected to have its second reading in the House of Commons in September or October. The Bill contains wide-ranging measures designed to restrict the organised working class acting collectively and taking industrial action.

The main proposals are thresholds for turnouts in strike ballots, restrictions on the right to picket and the removal of the ban on the use of agency workers to replace striking workers. The government is also extending the role and powers of the Certification Officer who is responsible for regulating trade unions, including providing this official with a new power to impose financial penalties on unions.

Industrial action, including strike action, will only be lawful if there is a minimum 50 percent turnout amongst trade union members who are entitled to vote, 40 percent of those who were balloted must vote in favour of industrial action. In addition, the Bill lays down that abstentions should be treated as 'no' votes for industrial action; which contravenes the policy of the International Labour Organisation which states that only votes cast should be taken into account. The 40 percent yes vote requirement would apply to four 'essential public services': health, the fire service, transport and education. This is in fact far more wide-ranging than it appears at first glance as transport services include roads, rail, aviation, maritime, border security and Transport for London (i.e. London Underground). There will be time limits for strike mandates which will reduce the momentum in union campaigns, reducing or removing trade unions' rights to facility time, specific and bureaucratic requirements for picket lines, the introduction of new criminal offences and sanctions for picketing although unlawful picketing is already regulated by both civil and criminal law.

The removal of the ban on agency workers to replace striking workers (a ban in place since 1973) will permit employers to use 'scab' labour to break strikes. This is manna from heaven for the capitalist class. Jack London, author of The War of the Classes wrote 'after God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with which he made a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumour of rotten principles. When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and Angels weep in Heaven, and the Devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out' (The Scab).

Frances O'Grady, the TUC general secretary, responded that 'the government’s proposals on union ballots will make legal strikes close to impossible. Union negotiators will be left with no more power than Oliver Twist when he asked for more. After five years of falling living standards the prospects for decent pay rises have just got a whole lot worse' (Guardian 12 May).

The new Trade Union Bill follows the capitalist class onslaught on the organised working class in the 1980s and 90s. Alan Budd, the economic adviser to Thatcher has said 'raising unemployment was an extremely desirable way of reducing the strength of the working classes – if you like, that what was engineered there in Marxist terms was a crisis of capitalism which recreated a reserve army of labour and has allowed the capitalists to make high profits ever since' (Guardian 23 April 2012). In the 1980s and 90s a series of trade union laws were introduced that removed immunities in industrial action, imposed restrictions on the right to picket, increased legal interference into the internal affairs of the unions, the closed shop was made unlawful and the definition of a dispute was narrowed, including restricting industrial action to disputes between workers and their own employer, thus outlawing solidarity action.

The current capitalist crisis and recession has seen production cut back and large numbers of workers lose their jobs, and as a result of high unemployment and job insecurity trade unions become less effective as bargaining organisations, meaning that laws restricting trade unions are easier to implement. Keith Ewing, President of the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom said in May there had been a 'shocking decline in collective bargaining with just 20% of workers covered by an agreement, compared with 82% in the 1970s. In 1978 I was one of 13 million trade unionists and I am now one of only 6 million. Our collective bargaining structures are collapsing' (Morning Star 14 May).

All this presents the working class with a problem in maintaining real wages. A pay increase which does not keep up with the cost of living represents a fall in 'real wages'. The capitalist class know this and will exploit it to their own benefit. Marx pointed out that 'the general tendency of capitalist production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages' (Value, Price and Profit). It should be remembered that wages can never, for long, rise above the level which allows the employers to make a profit. The times when the workers can hope to gain an improvement are when the capitalists are doing well, expanding production and accumulating capital. The most successful strike is the one that never happens because when trade is brisk employers may yield to the mere threat of a strike interrupting production and profits.

The wage which the working class receive is the price of their labour-power and the price of this commodity fluctuates, like that of all commodities, around its value as determined by the amount of socially-necessary labour incorporated in it. If competition between the working class for jobs was unrestricted then wages would tend to fall below the value of labour-power, as often happened in the 19th century before effective trade unions existed. Combining together in unions to exert collective pressure on employers is a way the working class can prevent their wages falling below the value of their labour-power and below the subsistence level. To resist the intensity of exploitation and to maintain real wages against inflation workers will have no choice but to struggle for higher wages even if this means using the strike weapon. The strike, during an economic depression, though, is a blunt instrument to wield. It is difficult to use the strike to gain more pay when production is being curtailed, workers being laid off and the business facing bankruptcy.

Trade unions, then, are defensive organisations of the working class against what Marx called 'the never-ceasing encroachments of capital' but they cannot stop the exploitation of the working class. This exploitation is inherent in the wages system and can only be abolished along with it through the conversion of the means of production into common ownership under the democratic control of the whole community.

As Marx wrote: 

'at the same time, and quite apart from the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerrilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto: 'A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!' they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: 'Abolition of the wages system!' (Value, Price and Profit).

As socialists, we stand with our fellow working class in their necessary battles to defend themselves, but we point out at all times that the real victory to be achieved is the abolition of the wages system.

Steve Clayton

Abolish money (1983)

Book Review from the February 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Contemporary Political Philosophy: Radical Studies. Edited by Keith Graham. Cambridge University Press. £4.50

This short book (160 pages) contains six essays by "young British philosophers"—professional university philosophy teachers. The essays are of varying quality and it is unfortunate for the other four that the first two are so weak as to risk deterring the reader from continuing. But this would be a mistake as the others are much more interesting, particularly the last two where Keith Graham refutes the "philosophical anarchist" view that no "rational moral agent" can accept majority, democratic decisions, and where Anthony Skillen states the case for the fullest freedom of speech against groups like the SWP who advocate physical violence (and, presumably, if ever they got power, state censorship and violence) to prevent certain views being expressed.

The two remaining essays, and it is these we concentrate here, deal with Marx's views on political democracy under capitalism and on the democratic nature of socialism. They confirm that Marx did not denounce existing representative institutions (the vote, parliamentary control, civil rights) as "bourgeois democracy" fit only to be replaced by a one-party dictatorship, but regarded them as sufficiently democratic to be useful to the economic and political struggle of the working class.

The two authors also discover (much to their embarrassment) that Marx regarded socialism as necessarily a moneyless society. Russell Keat, whose essay analyses in detail a part of Marx's The Jewish Question (written in 1843, just as he was becoming a socialist), is forced to admit:

it seems that Marx is unwilling to accept that the social relationships involved in (economic) exchange can properly be said to display genuine freedom. This is so, whether or not these exchange relationships include the sale of labour-power itself.

Adding in a footnote:

It follows that, for Marx, full human autonomy cannot be achieved in "market socialism", since, despite the absence of class exploitation, alienation continues through the existence of exchange relationships.

Richard Norman comes to the same conclusion:

There is a strand in socialist thought which seems to envisage the eventual abolition of money. This might seem to be encouraged by a passage in the "Critique of the Gotha Programme" where Marx suggests that true equality would be attainable only when there had been achieved an economic condition of sheer abundance.

After this rather cautious and grudging admission that Marx stood for the abolition of money, Norman goes on to state that, while he can accept that "an appropriate egalitarian principle would be one of free provision of basic needs", adding that "as well as health care these basic needs might include, say, housing, basic foodstuffs and education", he cannot

imagine that all needs and desires could be met on this principle of free provision. Marx's vision of total abundance smacks too much of nineteenth-century optimism. There must be inescapable decisions about using limited resources for this purpose rather than for that, and therefore in any society there will be relative scarcity in at least some respects. One cannot realistically imagine a situation where people, whether individually or collectively, simply go and help themselves to a rare wine or an artistic masterpiece or an exquisitely carved piece of furniture whenever they feel like it.

This objection to a moneyless society of free access is put to us every week, though the example used is more usually a luxury yacht or a Rolls Royce (we hope Norman does not take this as an insult since, after all, what has always been the task of philosophers if not to express more logically and more coherently points of view held by the population in general?). 

There are two answers to this. The first is that the objector assumes that people would have suddenly been transformed from capitalist to socialist society without changing their ideas or attitudes. Thus the Hyde Park heckler would still dream of living like the rich he reads about in the papers (and the university lecturer would still dream about living a "cultured" life surrounded by beautiful things). But in fact, of course, socialism is not something that is going to be, or could be, introduced for people, but something that they are going to have to establish themselves in full awareness of what they are doing and why. The people who establish socialism, in other words, will no longer want to ape the rich and understand that, in a society where goods and services will be freely and permanently available in relative abundance, hoarding or grabbing (or investing in rare wines or masterpieces) will be pointless.

The second answer is that in  socialist society everybody will have a Rolls-Royce and the best wines! Not literally, of course, but in the sense that whatever is produced in socialism will be of the best quality, though, once again, without any of the prestige that attaches to the best things today just because they are out of reach of the vast majority and only available to the rich. The fact is that, while it is true that resources are limited in an absolute sense, it is not true that human wants are limitless. It is technically possible today (much more than it was in the "optimistic 19th century) to produce enough of what humans, as rational beings, are likely to reasonably want in a rationally-organised free and equal society.

Before examining Norman's suggestion to keep money in "socialist" society for certain purposes we are going to have to digress a little to explain what money is. Money is not, as Norman appears to think, some sort of voucher that can be used, at the discretion of the holder, to acquire particular goods according to choice. Money is a social relation in the sense that it is a product of a particular kind of socio-economic system, one where goods are produced as commodities; that is, as items produced to be sold on a market; which in turn presupposes non-social, or private, ownership of products since exchange can only take place between separate owners. Money is a special kind of commodity, the one which can be exchanged for all or any other commodity. Money and commodity production go together; they are parts of the same set of social relationships which also include exchange and private property.

But socialism is a system of society which outdates commodity-production and money precisely because it is a society based, as Norman himself puts it, on "the common ownership and popular control of the means of production"; in other words, a society where what is produced is also commonly owned and is directly appropriated by the community. Consumer goods produced under such circumstances cannot be sold to the members of the community which already owns them; all that can happen to them is that they can be shared, allocated, divided, handed out or made available to the members of the community in accordance with a democratic decision.

If Norman had understood the nature of money, it is in these terms that he could better have expressed his point of view, as an argument about how consumer goods should be allocated in socialist society.

Marx, like us, realised that the essence of socialist distribution was free access according to needs as judged by the individual members of socialist society, in other words, that consumer goods and services should be freely available for people to take and use as and when they needed them. With the fantastic development of the forces of production since Marx's day, this stage could be reached fairly rapidly after the establishment of socialism.

Marx, as is understandable, given the lower level of development of the powers of production in the 19th century, envisaged this taking somewhat longer and suggested that, while awaiting the stage where full free access ("from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" as Marx puts it in the passage from the Critique of the Gotha Programme Norman mentions) would have become possible, consumer goods in socialist society could be distributed by some system of voucher or tickets. He himself mentioned, following an idea of Robert Owen and others, a system of "labour-time" vouchers which would have linked the consumption of the individual members of socialist society to the number of hours of working time they had contributed to the common productive effort.

It is easy to think up drawbacks to such a system — and Marx only mentioned labour-time vouchers as one possible way of distributing consumer goods in the early days of socialist society — but Marx was clear that such vouchers would not be money, could not be money in fact, since money implied commodity-production which socialism precisely abolishes in favour of production directly and solely for use.

Thus when Norman doubts that full free access to all consumer goods and services will be possible and suggests as an alternative "satisfaction of the basic needs of all, plus equality of monetary incomes over and above that", what he is suggesting is a distribution system where basic needs (housing, basic foodstuffs, education, health, transport) would be provided free, but where other less basic needs (what? Surely not rare wine, artistic masterpieces and exquisitely-carved  furniture!) would only be satisfied on production of a voucher, equal amounts of which would be distributed to each member of socialist society to use according to their individual choice. Put this way, Norman's scheme would be an alternative to Marx's, but the problem which Marx felt socialist society would certainly have had to face had it been established in his day has since been to all intents and purposes solved by the subsequent development of the forces of production.

Today there is no longer any need to think in terms of vouchers as a means of distributing goods in socialist society. This is why we emphasise free access to consumer goods and services according to individual needs as the socialist mode of distribution and as something that could be implemented very rapidly once capitalism has been abolished.

Having said all this, it is nevertheless encouraging that "contemporary political philosophers" should have begun to discuss a moneyless society.

Adam Buick

A Quotable Quote (2001)

From the January 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

"There are no nations! There are no Russians! There are no Arabs! There is no Third World! There is no West! There is only one holistic system of systems—one vast and immanent, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars! Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichsmarks, roubles, rin [???], pounds and shekels! It is the international system of currency that determines the totality of life on this planet! That is the natural [sic] order of things today! That is the atomic, subatomic and galactic structure of things . . .
"You . . . howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT, and AT&T and Du Pont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world now. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state—Karl Marx? They pull out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories and minimax solutions like the good little systems analysts they are, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments just like we do.
"We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies . . . The world is a collage of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable laws of business. The world is a business . . . !!"

(Part of a speech by the American tycoon Jensen, in the novelisation of the film Network, Sphere Books Ltd, 1977, pp.130-1.)

Bloggers Note: Jensen's - played by Ned Beatty - actual speech can be viewed at the following YouTube Link.

There's a good time coming (1977)

From the October 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

What a spectacle! Jim Callaghan receiving a standing ovation after telling the TUC Congress that restricting wage increases, plus reduced taxation, was in the best interest of trade unionists. Some at least, remained seated. Could it be that they have seen through the myth that pay increases are the cause of either inflation or unemployment?

Referring to "free collective bargaining" the Prime Minister claimed: "the race is to the swift, the lion's share goes to the lions". The real "lions" are the capitalist class with their built-in advantage of ownership of the means of production. An advantage which puts the debate on "industrial democracy" into perspective. As for members of the working class, though their level of wages can be influenced by strong unions, they are paid for the value of their labour-power. We agree with Callaghan that high wages have nothing to do with Socialism—a social system yet to be established in which money and trade unions will not have any role to play.

In the manner of his predecessors, regardless of party, the PM's message was not all belt-tightening. The Government wants a steady rate of expansion and given the right conditions, there would be no further reduction in the standard of living. In fact there are good times coming—"we have the best chance since the end of the war to make this year the best since the end of the war". Do not get too excited: capitalism with all of its problems will continue as usual.

Introducing the debate on pensions and welfare benefits Jack Jones, Gen. Sec. of the TGWU, said that too many pensioners were condemned to live below the poverty line. In 1906 J. R. Clynes MP declared "that the Labour Party would have been well worth creating if in the next ten years they did nothing more than settle the question of old age pensions". At the time the proposed settlement was for five shillings per week. 

Socialism was possible in 1906—in 1977 it is imperative.

Pat Deutz